Walking the plastics tightrope in Europe

This week’s Plastics Strategy from the European Commission (EC) presents the cement industry with a narrowing target. If the Plastics Strategy is successful it will prevent plastics waste altogether. This will then eliminate the key calorific content of refuse-derived fuels (RDF) and disrupt co-processing supply chains at cement plants across the continent. If it is too lax then dumping plastics in landfill could become more economically viable, also changing the market dynamic. Neither extreme looks likely at this stage but the European cement industry needs to make its views known.

Cembureau, the European cement association, has done just that today with the publication of a position paper on the subject. It conveniently ignores the top two tiers of the waste hierarchy – prevention and re-use – but it does recognise that ‘high quality recycling’ is the preferred option. This is followed by the target of its lobbying: protecting co-processing. Make no mistake, this is supporting industrial behaviour change with solid environmental benefits. Its areas for policymakers to focus on include protecting co-processing: a ban on landfill; linking energy recovery to recycling; concentrating on the legislation; thinking about material lifespan sustainability benefits; and helping minimise the investment costs for processing facilities.

Providing cool heads prevail, the importance of co-processing plastics as part of any realistic plastics strategy seems unlikely to change any time soon. What’s more likely to be the real target for Cembureau is standardising measures on collection, sorting and material recovery across the European Union (EU). For example, as this column has reported twice in 2017 (GCW288 and GCW324), the issues with waste disposal legislation in Italy have led to various problems in the sector. Waste collectors found it easier to export RDF to Morocco from Italy rather than use it locally in 2016. The slag industry has also reported similar issues with reuse in Italy. The consolidation of the local cement industry following the takeover of Italcementi and Cementir by HeidelbergCement and of Cementizillo by Buzzi Unicem should present a more unified industry approach towards alternative fuels. Backup from the EC could solve the other half of the alternative fuels puzzle in Italy and help to deliver serious change. Ecofys data from 2014 showed the EU co-processing average rate as being 41%, with six countries – Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Bulgaria, Italy and Greece – having rates below 30%.

Vagner Maringolo of Cembureau outlined the market opportunities for waste uptake at cement plants at the 11th Global CemFuels Conference that took place in Barcelona in February 2017. He started by revealing that plastics represented over 40% of the total share of alternative fuels used in the EU in 2014. A ban on landfilling municipal waste was expected to boost the supply of RDF and a Cembureau/Ecofys study on the market potential of alternative fuels concluded that around 10Mt of waste was co-processed in cement kilns in the EU28 in 2015. This represented around 2% of total combustible waste each year but it represented 10% of all of the energy recovery from waste in the EU. In other words co-processing plastics waste offers a very attractive means for the EU to meet its sustainability targets.

However, before Cembureau and the cement industry starts popping the (reusable) champagne corks, consider the wider picture. China has banned imports of foreign waste in 2018 including RDF from the UK, a major exporter. Unless new markets are found this may impact the price of RDF in Europe. Brexit is another example how of European waste markets might be disrupted in the medium-term. Cement producers want a steady supply of cheap fuels but if the providers can’t make enough money from their products then the market will fail. The tightrope for Cembureau to walk with plastics is to promote RDF use and secure its supply. Persuading the EC to support this may involve some wobbling along the way.